How to argue against a particular delusion.

A friend of mine is a pretty die-hard Christian (shock horror, both of his parents are missionaries/vicars) and he often posts little sayings of some kind or another on Facebook, which I usually ignore. However, today he posted something that really irritated me for some reason:

"The more I look at science, the more in awe of God I become."

And just to make that worse, one of his Christian friends commented "Boom" as if he had made some kind of infallible argument. Somehow, I feel as though nothing I say will make any difference because they must be incredibly deluded already to believe that God just "invented" science. Basically, this is the guy who thinks he's a "modern and intelligent" Christian by saying that things like Noah's Ark are "just stories and aren't meant to be taken seriously by Christians". But if that is true, then why take ANY of the Bible seriously and where does he draw the line between stories and (what he believes is) the truth?

In the past I asked him and his friend where the evidence was. He claimed science (yes, seriously) helped prove Christianity and that Christianity was about "opening yourself" to it and believing, and then you "feel God" or whatever. How do you argue with someone like that??

What do you all say to religious people (not necessarily just Christians) who claim that science is just an invention of God? Is there a specific way to argue with someone who twists everything to awkwardly suit modern day thinking?

The underlying "point" to Kelly's post (I don't know if he intended it but it is there) is that yes all communities have a group bias, but there is a huge difference in the level of cognitive disconnect and logical fallacy between the theist on one hand and the non-theist on the other hand. The short answer is your "falling short" is the point.

I think it also depends on the theist. I am not sure if there is as huge of a disconnect, but I think the focus is different. If an atheist critiques religion in a sloppy manner, it doesn't have a huge effect.

But religion has a huge effect because if modifies how you behave and what lens you use to interpret the world. So atheists can get away with a lot of irrational thinking and as long as it doesn't drastically disturb their lens or their behavior it goes unnoticed. But I think in order to purge the belief perseverance and confirmation bias out of ourselves, we need to treat it the same.

*edit: Though I should also mention I take an anti-shaming position. So when I say treat it the same, I mean just seeing it as something that needs to be purged. I think shaming things in others just leads to people reacting by digging in deeper in their positions and that shaming them has the opposite effect of feeding belief perseverance.

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do to reach these people. The only way out is if they do the work themselves.

I had a weeks long discussion with a guy over Youtube asking him how it is just and fair to be saved by Jesus... and how exactly this 'saving' works. We basically nailed down that it is an immoral plan by an unjust god. He didn't have anything to justify his belief so he started chanting magical prayers in the name of Jesus to dispel my 'evil'... I pointed out that together we demonstrated that the core story of Jesus was immoral and unjust... and that you cannot call on the immorality of Jesus to dispel truth... unless you worship evil yourself and your goal is immorality. He never had even the start of an argument or reply against this. That doesn't matter to them. NOTHING will change their mind. I dare say even Jesus couldn't manage it.

I think you're right. It seems that nothing will even get him to question a single part of his beliefs. No matter what you say, he turns it around and makes it work in his own head, so it's irrelevant what I say. Nothing will change his mind, and more importantly, it seems nothing will change the actual way that his thoughts are processed. It never even occurs to him that something he believes might not be true. It's like a sickness.

You can show them a hundred times but they have to use their own stubby little fingers and do it until they get it right. Critical thinking and sound reasoning are acquired skills that require practice.